BS”D
Cherrybim,
I asked daas Torah before participating in marches for EY or Soviet Jewry and was told all I should do (and that only because I really wanted to) was to be the lead runner in the SSSJ run, back years ago when I was a runner. I guess it was a message when I quickly cramped up, though I had run faster and further in my day with no problem. I remember my MO friends wasting the time of the police, who were very sorely needed in crime ridden 1980’s NY, with symbolic arrests. And more than anything, I remember how perestroika came about and how the SSSJ crowd, now bereft of a cause, claimed it was not enough that 99% of Jews were free and took up the cause for a couple of people who really did have state secrets. And I remember sitting in a cold Moscow sukkah in 1992 with one of the last of those who were denied a visa till the very end, a nuclear physicist turned Chabad activist, a week before he left in peace, only to find a life as a bored, unproductive pensioner waiting for him in EY, a cold contrast to his last days in Moscow where he had become a respected fixture of our then little and now huge shul.
The protests were in vain, and I was told many times by people here that they did not help much and only angered the wounded Russian bear.
Now I speak Ivrit to many a returned “oleh” here in Ukraine, including recently to a non-Jewish gas repairman, an incompetent shikker-vi-a-goy who caused me much agmas nefesh with his amateur repair of my water heater which was in fact a swindle whereby he turned off my gas until I agreed to pay him what he needed to get drunk for supposedly bringing my heater up to standard rather than just cleaning it as I had requested.
How did he get to EY? Very simple – he married a Jew, who then left him in EY where he was rightfully unemployable so he rushed back. But he got a sal klita, courtesy of teh US taxpayer, which of course he drank up fast. For this my friends had to take the time of the NYPD, a fine force with which I have had quite a few positive encounters? Meanwhile, the real activists, Reb Eliyahu Essas and Reb Yitzchok Kogan, are back in Russia, the first part time and the second full time, working with real Jews in Moscow and making sure that those who now do choose EY do so as Yidden and not for a quick buck. Except for Scharansky, the refuseniks who stayed are marginalized; when Boris Chernobylsky AH drowned to death, he was destitute and forgotten, and Ida Nudel dedicates her time to helping others like him who found that EY was no paradise. Meanwhile, Hashem did away with Communism and Jews here live free and proud and better than FSU “olim” in EY.
Next, how do you know WHY they had a heter for PPM and whether that heter applies to US?? I have had many encounters with people who have heterim and make it very clear it is for THEM only and to ask another rov. If that is how BH his family turned out, maybe he knew that at their level PPM won’t damage them just as I hope that I can no longer be damaged by Haim Moshe or Enrico Macias (both grudgingly OK though not mutar in certain circles where I was involved) at 3 AM while working.
Finally, who says PPM were spat at? They did a feel good concert and said a few nice words – big deal. Today, believe me, they’d do the same for the Baleswinians because now we’re the bad guys and we are free even in the FSU.
Shnas hatzlocho vetshuva miyadis.
And farewell until Moshiach comes and sets you straight, because no one else can. I cannot in good conscience spend any more time replying to you as I cannot bring myself to sink to reply to one who insults me personally.